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Electric more efficient than hydrogen for cars

Wed., June 14, 2017

Re: The clear way to help out the environment, June 10

The clear way to help out the environment, June 10

I’m glad to see increasing coverage of alternate-energy vehicles. In his review of the 2018 Honda Clarity, Sami Haj-Assaad writes that the hydrogen-powered car offers the “driving experience of being in a normal vehicle.”

How is a car that you can’t buy, and that you can neither refuel at the hundreds of thousands of gasoline stations worldwide nor the trillions of electrical outlets worldwide, anything like normal?

Electric vehicles can be charged overnight at home, just as you charge your smartphone. Hydrogen-powered cars may be almost as bad for the environment as the normal gas guzzler, since hydrogen has first to be extracted from some chemical compound, then compressed, then shipped to the (not yet built) hydrogen fuelling station, pumped into underground storage and then pumped into your car — all of which takes energy.

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Finally! It’s ready to go! You can turn the hydrogen back into the chemical known as water and use the energy to drive your Clarity’s electric motor.

Why not just get an all-electric car and plug it in someplace? All the infrastructure is already there and it’s vastly more efficient.

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